ITK Python Wrapping Now Available for the Latest MSVC, Clang, and GCC

ITK Git master has reached a major milestone — Python wrapping now builds and cleanly passes tests on the default compilers for MacOSX, Linux, and Windows! Python bindings make the extensive library of scientific image analysis algorithms embodied in the Insight Toolkit available to the rich scientific Python ecosystem. The ITK bindings complement excellent Python wrappings already available for SimpleITK, the simplified API for the Insight Toolkit. Python wrapping allows for rapid prototyping via an accessible language for researchers.

Green ITK Python wrapping goodness.

A number of people have made the green wrapping goodness possible. Michka Popoff has spearheaded the cleanup effort. Kevin Hobbs and Bradley Lowekamp made sure there were Nightly dashboard builds on which to improve. Gaëtan Lehmann engineered the current CMake and SWIG-based wrapping infrastructure, WrapITK, and brought it into the repository build system. Brad King wrote CastXML (C-family Abstract Syntax Tree XML Output), the next generation, Clang-based replacement for GCCXML, which is used to parse the C++ abstract syntax tree. This work was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health-National Library of Medicine (NIH-NLM).

To build the wrapping, enable ITK_WRAP_PYTHON in your CMake configuration. To test the wrapping without installation, copy the Wrapping/Generators/Python/WrapITK.pth file to Python's site-packages directory. Windows users should also add the bin build directory containing the DLL's to their PATH environmental variable.